


With Bated Breath

by acpaul19



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, major feels, oh the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 08:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18007493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acpaul19/pseuds/acpaul19
Summary: She had seen his face. That face. The face that held years of torment, years of suffering, years of proof that he was a monster. Five times he waited for her and one time he didn't.





	With Bated Breath

**Author's Note:**

> For Lucifer Bingo, Prompt: five times fic  
> Shoutout to my awesome beta reader Fireloom. You're amazing and wonderful, don't ever forget it :)

3 hours and 47 minutes

It took him a few seconds to decipher the look on The Detective’s face. Sure, he had just killed the man she had known as Pierce, but that didn’t explain the surprise and...fear. It was fear. His wings weren’t out. Why the sudden...it was then he touched his face, then he felt the scars, the heat, the energy that radiated out of him. The Devil had returned. He closed his glowing eyes, unfurled his wings, and flew. He didn’t look back.

He flew as far away as fast as he could. He couldn’t return to the penthouse just yet. Dan and Ella were still there. So he continued to fly. Harder, faster, higher. The farther away he soared, the easier it was. Not just because The Detective made him weak, but because he could pretend. He could lie to himself that she hadn’t seen it. He could live in his flight, he could breathe the thinning air that burned in his lungs, he could feel the sun’s warm rays on his back, something he hadn’t done in years.

Finally, after hours of beating his wings and when exhaustion overcame him, he found himself on a beach. Not their beach. Not the beach that held so much importance to him. Not the beach he had crawled from hell onto. Not the beach where he first tasted her sweet lips and held her breath in his mouth. This beach was dead. Rocks instead of sand, driftwood scattered around him, the air was cooler, cleaner. Clouds that threatened rain hung overhead.

Lucifer stared out into the ocean. The gray world around him reflecting his internal turmoil. And waited. What for, he wasn’t sure. Hope got the better of him. Maybe she hadn’t seen. He looked down at his watch, the silver second hand ticked by. How long it had been since Chloe’s world changed? And he waited.

The calming waves ebbed and flowed, white noise over the thumping in his brain. Seagulls sang above him, cackling at his misfortune. He felt his phone vibrate in his breast pocket. If he left it there, if he didn’t look at the message, if he didn’t answer the call, he could pretend. Pretend it was her, pretend she was worried about him and where he’d gone. Pretend he hadn’t just broken every piece of his human life in Los Angeles.

Hope reared its ugly head one more time, giving him false security that he’d see her name across the display. He dug the phone out of his pocket, and almost, not quite, but almost prayed that it was her name. It wasn’t.

And so he waited.

 

6 days 15 hours 21 minutes

He knew that The Detective needed time. Of course. It was only natural. Her entire belief system had gone up in flames, almost literally. He had the endurance to stick it out. He could spend his time daydreaming about their reunion. He could spend his time in false scenes where she kissed him, loved him, and reminded him that he wasn’t The Devil, not to her.

So no wallowing, he told himself. Look your best. She’ll walk through those elevator doors and jump into your arms. She will. Any minute. Minutes turned into hours and hours turned into days.

His confidence and anticipation at his expected outcome was his undoing. And so he waited.

Each ding of the elevator found his heart in his throat. He’d hear the sound and immediately stand, confident he’d see her green eyes and warm smile. And each time he didn’t, the promise of a happy ending that he clutched to with every fiber of his being, slipped a little farther away.

The visitors were nothing. A reminder of what he never wanted again. Women in skin-tight dresses, men in slacks hung low on their hips...all the same. They would never be her. Not her.

At first, he was kind, _thank you but no thank you_ . As the week progressed, he bit back a little harder. _Leave! Don’t come back!_ He’d scream as they scrambled to push that button. That button that signaled that sound. That sound that he expected for a full week to bring him the one he wanted, the one he’d laid his life down for, the one that made him a better man, a better human, a better...Devil.

Instead, the elevator came, the doors opened, and his unwelcome guests tumbled into an empty lift. The doors closed.

And so he waited.

 

30 days 8 hours 7 minutes

Maze had all but tied him up and dragged him down to Lux. _Stop this! Enough!_ She yelled at him. _You need to make an appearance. We’re losing face._

What did it matter? He didn’t care. The stars no longer held their light. Whiskey no longer tasted sweet on his tongue. Desire was a fool’s utopia.

 _Get over yourself!_ Maze pushed him into the booth set in the center of the noisy nightclub. Women eyed him, looks full of lust and heat. Heat he didn’t feel. He plastered on his usual grin, the fake smile that said he wasn’t broken, that he wasn’t in pain, and that the wretchedness of the amber liquid in his mouth was luscious on his moistened lips.

An act. Fake it, till you make it. The Devil was in and ready to deal. The man that requested his company looked so much like Lucifer felt, disheveled, exhausted, dejected and desperate.

 _I just want her back._ A woman. That was what this man wanted so desperately in his life. It was his true desire, his true calling. His everything.

So do I, Lucifer thought.

There was nothing he could do for the man. No miracle cure for heartache or the tribulations of neglect he had come to wrap around him. Like a warm blanket, he lived in it.

Then he saw her. The grays and blacks of his soul turned to bright pinks and reds. Her hair bounced with golden rays of sunshine. Just her hair, just her back, that was all he needed to shed the melancholy he bathed in for over a month.

His heart pounded, he could hear the ringing in his ears, all other sounds washing away, all other sights blurred to nothing. His focus solely on the woman across the club. And he waited. He watched her slowly turn, revealing her face.

His heart dropped. It stopped beating. The ringing ceased. The club cleared. A cold shower washed over him.

Pretty. She was pretty. But she wasn’t his. Instead of an ocean on a clear day, honey brown eyes looked at him. Lips not as plump, a smile not as bright, and a demeanor not as graceful. Disappointment at his own mistake didn’t even begin to encompass what he felt tearing through his chest.

For a moment, for just a moment, he wasn’t waiting. In a flash of an instant, she was there with him, smiling and gazing at him with loving eyes, touching his hand with her soft fingers, running her thumb along his mouth, holding him in her arms. And as quickly as it had come, it left. Leaving him cold and shivering in his dark abyss of a soul, wanting, needing, and never having, never quite able to climb his way from the hole. The hole he had dug on hands and knees with hope and a dim light at the end of the tunnel hinting at a way out, suggesting she would come to him.

And so he waited.

 

68 Days, 17 hours, 34 minutes

The sharp and burning lacerations to his heart and soul had left him. He didn’t know when and he didn’t know how, but they had been replaced with a dull ache. A phantom soreness had stretched through his body. The throbbing a dull memory of the guttural torment he endured only two months before.

Lucifer had found a rhythm. Wake up, check his phone, take a shower, check his phone, get dressed, listen for the elevator, check his phone. Over and over, the gut-wrenching need to make sure he hadn’t missed it. It. The note, the text, the sign, any sign that she was there, that she had moved past the shock. Any sign that he could go to her, pull her in, never let go. Did the refresh button on his email even work anymore? Did his cell phone even have reception? He text Maze hourly, some excuse, one right after the other, just to make sure it worked. Just to make sure that he hadn’t missed it. It.

He made sure to put her contact on a special sound, an adorable sound, a sound that would be his signal that life would begin again, that he hadn’t wasted months of yearning and longing for nothing. That didn’t stop him, no, from leaping towards the device whenever it rang, no matter the noise it emitted. Maybe the phone glitched. Maybe it hadn’t taken. Maybe it’s her... It never was.

This time was no exception. He didn’t recognize the number and that gave him more hope than he deserved. Maybe she lost her phone. Maybe it broke. Maybe…

With a shaking hand, he swiped to answer.

_Mr. Morningstar…_

Frustration at himself, anger at the person on the other end for daring to call him, disappointment at it all.

 _New Lieutenant_ ...not her... _can you come in_ ...she’ll see me... _available tomorrow_...not soon enough…

Not soon enough and too soon.

Lucifer spent hours pacing, hours staring at his closet, hours thinking, hoping, wishing. Dreaming about what he’d say, how she’d react to seeing him, how they’d finally be able to move forward, move on, be together, be forever.

Reality was not so nice and if plastering on his fake ego for the club to see had been hard, walking through the precinct was agonizing. The smells, the sounds, each person that passed could have been her, should have been her. Where was she? Why wasn’t she there? What had happened? Fear settled low in his stomach and he craned his neck around the open bull pin, searching.

No whiff of her perfume, no glimpse of a blonde ponytail, no reprimand of a silky voice chastising his name for something he’d done.

The lieutenant only held half of his attention, and that was being generous. _We’d like you to come back…understand it was a tough situation...everyone’s hurt...Decker...under review..._

What was that last bit? Under review? Review for what?

_Returning next week…_

Oh. Standard Operating Procedure. The investigation into Pierce was complete and she didn’t know. She didn’t ask him to come. She didn’t want him here. That was painfully obvious. If she had wanted him here, she would have asked. All the dreams and scenarios he built in his head came crashing, a flutter of cards stacked high floated down in his mind.

No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. The first time he looked at her after months of being apart would not be because the department asked for him to return. No. It would be because she wanted him there. It would be because she knew in her heart that they were meant to be together, that they had been through everything short of hell, and that he would never leave her.

And so he waited.

 

84 days

3 months, exactly. 12 weeks, exactly. Almost to the minute. He couldn’t stay away any longer. He had to see her. His addiction, his obsession, the overwhelming desire to get one single glimpse at her had finally won. He was weak.

It was raining. Of course, it was raining. There would be no other weather that would fit the mood Lucifer was in than rain. It was chilly, but that didn’t matter. He was numb. Numb on the outside and on the inside. He stood across the street from her apartment, not out in the open, but not hidden, enough that if she looked out her window she would see him, leaning against the palm tree.

It took every restraint he had not to walk those few steps to her door. And still, he waited.

He waited to see a shadow cross her curtains, he waited to hear her daughter’s laugh, he waited for anything.

The walls he built began to crack, the hope faded, a wind swept through his core taking every feeling, every notion, every scene he imagined with it and left one small thought. Resolution.

84 days he waited for her. 3 months he pined and agonized and craved. Gone. He had waited long enough. He had moped around long enough.

Enough was enough.

The weight he carried dissipated. He could take a full breath for the first time in three months. The sky, while still gray, looked less fuzzy. The rain felt cool on his sodden jacket. It was time to move on.

A final deep breath as if he was tasting air for the first time, Lucifer stepped out into the rain and laughed. He had made it through the dark, made it through the break, made it through pain far greater than any fall. Relief flooded into his system, the dull ache of his soul lighting anew with brighter, happier thoughts.  

He unfurled his wings and with only a soft whoosh, landed in his apartment. He was reborn and that deserved some recognition. Pulling out his phone, Lucifer text every person he knew that was down for a good time.

And so he waited.

  


87 days, 1 hour, 48 minutes

She didn’t know what she was going to say when she saw him. It was too much. To say she was going through a lot, was a massive understatement. So sue her if it took three months to get her head on straight. She mourned for Pierce. She freaked out over Lucifer. She worried about her job. She came to terms with her feelings.

So when she walked through the doors of Lux, intent on finding him, she still wasn’t sure how to act. Nervous energy filled her, hands shaking, knees weak, feet unsteady. She found him, of course, at his piano, gracefully moving his long fingers from key to key. The first time she’d seen him in over three months. His hair perfectly coiffed, his jacket smooth along his back. His back that held wings, large white glowing wings. He was so close she could smell him. A smell that made her heart skip a beat, musky, smokey, carnal.

“Lucifer…” She whispered, barely audible to her own ears and yet…

And yet the pianist’s hands stopped moving…

The chords stopped playing...

He sat a little straighter...

And so she waited...


End file.
